ConnectU

1. Prototype link (Please submit a link to a playable prototype, not a link to your design file) Link
2. Describe your project (max 150 words) College students often struggle with the complexities of their academic and career trajectories. This is problematic for those who lack a reliable platform to connect with fellow students with experience, but dislike the formal nature of talking to older alumni & industry experts. ConnectU is a social networking app that allows all students to access personalized mentorship from experienced, undergraduate peers, facilitating meaningful connections and empowering individuals to thrive academically and professionally.

With ConnectU, users can connect with mentors who have similar industry / academic interests, book in-person or online appointments, take advantage of the online chat system, and grow their ever-expanding network.

1. Describe your research process and findings. If you conducted any surveys or interviews, please include the survey form and/or interview questions here. If you conducted secondary research by pulling from online sources, please include a link to your sources. (Max 500 words) In the process of building ConnectU, we heavily prioritized user research, as it was important to us that we ideated around a problem that was prevalent across the majority of colleges in the U.S.

In order to further define our problem statement, we sent out a Google survey to a range of individuals from different colleges to identify their pain points with existing student mentorship systems: https://forms.gle/Ggb629SPYpjZMHWz8

Through the data collected from >25 responses, we conducted affinity mapping to group common pain points into themes, and found that while the majority of undergraduates prefer receiving advice from upperclassmen, they are hesitant to approach them due to a fear of “over-asking”. Additionally, they expressed a preference for features that allow them to build personal connections, as well as concerns for unstructured mentorship and uninvolved mentors. This allowed us to craft several How-Might-We statements focused on establishing trust between mentors and mentees, as well as a couple of user personas, both from the mentee’s and mentor’s perspectives.

Additionally, we conducted secondary research, focusing on pulling information from academic journals and articles written by undergraduate students (e.g. from John Hopkins University, and Princeton University). Our findings show that peer mentorship results in positive professional outcomes for underclassmen, affirming a potential solution. Finally, we did SWOT market research to identify key features of similar competitive products such as LinkedIn & ADPList, carrying those findings with us through the ideation phase.

1. Describe your most important design decisions. What research findings and/or user testing results led you to make these decisions? (Max 500 words) Due to survey respondents preferring more personal modes of communication, we decided to include a video chatting feature alongside a chatting system instead of a forum-based app – as those types of platforms are “impersonal and generalizable to a lot of people”. Additionally, the specifics of our filtering system (including a range of options from grade to career interests) were roughly inspired by other products in the market – to garner what existing features are already successful in the industry.

Built With

• figma